In the Storm
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: Dexter Grif's Enhanced Scale of Shitstorm Severity is composed of three categories. You know. It's all highly scientific.


Dexter Grif's Enhanced Scale of Shitstorm Severity is composed of three categories. You know. It's all highly scientific.

The first one encompasses things like, hey, you're stuck in the army and we're out of Oreos again, what the fuck. Grif's entire life right now is basically set to a background radiation of Category One Shitstorm.

Category Two Shitstorms blow in when Sarge has a Plan, because Sarge's capital-P Plans always have the same first step: shoot Grif in the face. And, like, Grif's pretty fond of his face. Shotgun blasts are lousy for his complexion.

But Category Three, y'know, DefCon Whatever-The-Worst-One-Is? That category of shitstorm is specially reserved for when the Blues do anything. Like, _fucking anything_. Someone breathes kinda funny over on Blue Team, bam, next thing you know you've got fucking ghosts and emo computers and massive conspiracies and unexplained deliveries of beef jerky in the middle of the night. It's fucking _weird_, is what it is.

"Just shut up and keep shooting!" Simmons yelps, slamming into cover beside him. "You're giving me a headache!"

So, okay, maybe Grif's been ranting aloud, and maybe it turns out his helmet mic's been picking it up even over the gunfire. Fucking _good_. "Hey, it's the least you deserve after all your 'Oh no the Blues are in trouble let's go help them get their asshole computer guy back because the scary lady yelled and oooh tell me more about how you're going to beat me with my own spine.'"

"Shut _up_, Grif." Simmons shoves him back against cover again, way the fuck harder than absolutely necessary.

For a second Grif can't quite place the weird little snarl in his voice, and then it registers as _pain_. "Wh- are you fucking hit?" He spots the hole in Simmons's armor, down through the undersuit in a gap near his shoulder, about the same time as he finishes the sentence. It rivets his attention the same way as the bullets skimming past his head. He wonders if maybe it's time to come up with a Category Four.

"What?" Simmons reloads, hesitates. "No. I mean, yes. I mean, I'm fine. I mean, it really hurts and it's kind of terrifying, but I think being a cyborg probably helps. Shut up. You gonna help me return fire, or?"

Grif's staring at the hole. He can't tell if there's blood or not. "So do you have, like, wires in there or something? Does it leak motor oil?"

"How the fuck should I know? It hurts, okay?"

Grif wrenches his attention away long enough to blind-fire one clip from his rifle over the jagged rock they've managed to score as their not-at-all-flimsy excuse for cover. The hardcore soldier assholes who currently have them surrounded probably don't give a fuck about his amazing marksmanship skills. "How much longer do we have to keep this up?"

"We're being a distraction," Simmons says, which isn't a fucking answer, but Carolina and Wash and Sarge and the Blues all disappeared into the HQ building a while ago, and it's not like he and Simmons can really just stroll through a rain of bullets back to the Warthog and drive off into the sunset without them. Tempting as it might be.

Grif leans back, opens his mouth to say something. He blinks.

He's on the ground, legs stretched out in front of him, back propped up against the rock, and Simmons is crouched over him, whispering, "Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck _oh fuck_."

"Um," Grif says. He blinks again, and it's like his eyelids weigh a fucking ton, like they want to just slam shut and seal that way. Worse than one of Sarge's staff meetings.

"_Grif_," Simmons says, and his fucked-up tone of voice jolts Grif back to awareness, heart slamming against his chest.

He looks down, sees Simmons's bloody hands fumbling over shredded armor, thinks, dispassionately, _gut-shot_, and then thinks it again, a hell of a lot less dispassionately. "Holy _fuck_," he says, but it comes out as a mumble. He's cold, shivering.

"Shut up," Simmons says again, reaching back to fumble for his medical kit. "Your suit's not compensating like it should. I don't know why."

Grif thinks about that; it takes his brain a second to clock over. "Broken."

"Of course it is," Simmons mutters, but the annoyance seems to steady his hands a little, so Grif figures he'll let him have that one. Simmons manages to fumble his way to the biofoam, apply it messily, and by that time Grif's starting to feel the pain as more than just a dull ache. Way more. "Sorry," Simmons says. "No painkillers."

Grif almost yells, then thinks better of it. You know. Probably best not to strain himself. Also, probably best not to remind Simmons who sold their stash of painkillers to the Blues back at Rat's Nest. "Hey," he says instead, once he kinda feels like he can breathe again, "Not that I'm complaining, but why aren't we dead?"

Simmons is the only guy Grif knows who can look sheepish in full body armor. "When you went down, I kinda threw all my grenades at once. And some rocks. I think I freaked them out. They've backed off for now."

"Aw, that's sweet," Grif says. "Now they're gonna come at us with a fucking _tank_ or something."

"Hey, it kept us alive another few minutes!"

"Yeah, well," Grif says, and waves a shaky hand at the bloody, warped entrance wound in his armor. "For whatever that's worth."

"You'll be fine," Simmons says, reloading his rifle and peering cautiously around the edge of their cover. "Stop complaining. The others should be out of there soon. And Wash has his healing unit thing."

"Oh, yeah," Grif says. "Forgot about that."

"Yeah. So shut up."

Grif does, mostly because he's still kind of sleepy. Then he figures out that maybe sleepy equals bad in this particular case, and stops shutting up. "Hey," he says. "If I don't get out of this, tell my wife and kids I died heroically. Fighting a velociraptor or something."

Simmons stops short, then does a double-take. "You don't have a wife and kids, dumbass."

"Almost had you," Grif says. His words are slurring a little. It's kind of like being drunk, only about a billion times more painful. So not really at all like being drunk. Pretty much just like being shot in the gut. "Shouldn't have told you that. Missed out on a prime opportunity to fuck with you."

"Yeah, well," Simmons says. "I know you too well. Which is a terrible burden, I might add."

Grif is quiet a few seconds longer, then adds, "I do have a dog."

"What?"

"Big stupid fucking dog. Got him in college."

Simmons leans back, tilting his head. "Are you fucking with me again?"

"Why would I fuck with you over my stupid fucking _dog_? He was a big dumb mutt, and I had to leave him behind with my dumbass roommate." He looks down at his hands, picking at the droplets of blood on his gauntlets. "Stupid fucker's probably still waiting for me. Or dead. He was old as balls when I got him."

"The roommate, or-?"

"The _dog_, asshole."

"Oh. Right."

Grif exhales slowly. "Sucks to care about something," he says, finally. "Guess you probably feel that way about some calculator you left at home or something. Cry yourself to sleep just thinking about it."

"Well," Simmons drawls, and seriously, some people are just not fucking made for sarcasm, "there is the vintage TI-83 model I keep on my nightstand at home."

"See, if it's plausible enough that I can't tell if you're joking, I think that makes you the punchline."

"Oh, just go back to bleeding to death, you prick."

Grif grins, but a weird lethargy is spreading to his arms and legs, and all of a sudden it doesn't seem that funny. His eyes are drifting shut again. A nap sounds really fucking good right now. Well, a nap sounds really fucking good pretty much all the time, but _especially _now. "Seriously, though," he says, thickly. "You got anyone you care about like that? I mean, pretend you weren't boring enough to just get shot in the _shoulder_ like a dumbass. Pretend you got shot somewhere really cool like me. Someone come to mind?"

"I care about lots of people," Simmons says, and peers over the rock face again for signs of their imminent and messy demise. "Unlike some assholes, I don't pretend to be all apathetic just so I look cool."

"Wow," Grif says, deadpan. "What a burn."

Simmons looks over the rock again, then sighs, squares his shoulders, and crouches down beside Grif. He does it so quickly that Grif kind of jerks back reflexively, which is not exactly the least painful thing he's done in the past five minutes.

"Hey, dumbass," Simmons says. "I really care about _you_, okay? And I'm kinda freaking out right now, so stop being all weird and serious and heartfelt for a second so I can pretend we're actually gonna get you out of here."

"Uh," says Grif.

Simmons makes a sound that's the verbal equivalent of gnashing his teeth in frustration, then leans closer, bumping their helmets together. "Fucking lazy idiot," he mutters.

Grif scrabbles for purchase on the conversation, but the total fucking _proximity_ of Simmons means he can only come up with a weak, "Nerd."

"Wow," Simmons says, matching his tone flawlessly. "What a burn."

"Shut up."

A bullet ricochets off the rock beside them, and they both jolt back. Grif feels a warm surge of agony streaming up from his gut, manages to mumble, "_Fuck_," and spits blood into his helmet's waste-disposal system. Simmons returns fire, but he's gotta be running low on bullets, and it's like, what the fuck, universe? What the actual fuck? Give a guy something to give two shits about, and take it all away the next minute?

Their radios crackle, and Caboose's voice rings through, "This is Red Team calling Blue Team, is Caboose speaking?"

Simmons looks down at Grif, who shrugs, because fuck it, sometimes the universe acts in mysterious ways. "Uh," he says. "Present?"

"Oh, good," Caboose says. "I hate when I call and I'm not home. We are finished our mission! It was very exciting. The mean lady found a man and yelled at him and he told us where Church is!" His voice drops to a stage-whisper. "I mean the real Church, not Mr. Washington, but don't tell him I said that. I think he's a little confused right now."

"Er," Simmons says. "Okay, I can do that. Are you guys gonna save our asses or what?"

"We've got wounded," Grif adds. "Ow."

And of _course_ Sarge's voice comes in next. "Is Grif dead?"

"No," Simmons says, with an admirable bit of edge to his voice that Grif could kinda get used to. Over Sarge's muttered _Dagnabbit_, he adds, "But we've both been hit."

Carolina cuts in, no-nonsense and fucking terrifying as ever. "How bad?"

"Coughing up blood, thanks for asking," Grif mutters, and Simmons cuts over him with, "Not great, yeah, we could really use a hand out here. And a healing unit."

"On our way," Wash says immediately, and there's a bit of a murmured argument about how best to go about dragging their asses out of the fire, but Grif doesn't really give a fuck at this point, because a way out is a way out. Let someone else do the heavy lifting.

Simmons sighs, sinks down next to Grif, his back against the rock, his shoulder pressing up against him, and Grif figures, y'know, fuck it. If this what a Category Five Shitstorm looks like, bring it on.


End file.
